in the Son of God, my
grief! and it is of no use for me; and it was Conall and his wife
hung Daly, and may they be paid for it!

'But oh! young woman, while I live, I put death on the village
where you will be; plague and death on it; and may the flood rise
over it; that much is no sin at all, O bright God; and I pray with
longing it may fall on the man that hung Daly; that left his people
and his children crying.

'O stretch out your limbs! The air is murky overhead; there is
darkness on the sun, and the fish do not leap in the water; there
is no dew on the grass, and the birds do not sing sweetly. With
sorrow after you, Daly, till death, there never will be fruit on
the trees.

'And that is the true man, that didn't humble himself or lower
himself to the Gall; Anthony Daly, O Son of God! He was that with
us always, without a lie. But he died a good Irishman; and he never
bowed the head to any man; and it was with false swearing that
Daly was hung, and with the strength of the Gall.

'If I were a clerk--kind, light, cheerful with the pen--it is I
would write your ways in clear Irish on a flag above your head. A
thousand and eight hundred and sixteen, and four put to that, from
the coming of the Son of God, to the death of Daly at the Castle of
Seefin.'

I have heard, and have also seen in manuscript, a terrible list of
curses that he hurled at the head of another poet, Seaghan Burke. But
these were, I think, looked on as a mere professional display, and do
not seem to have any ill effect.

Here are some of them:--

'That God may perish you on the mountain-side, without a priest,
bishop, or clerk. Seven years may you be senseless and without wit,
going from door to door as an unfortunate creature.

'May you have a mouth that will go back to your ear, and may your
lips be turned back like gums; that your legs may lose feeling from
the knee down, your eyes lose their sight, and your hands lose
their strength.

'Deformity and lameness and corruption upon you; flight and defeat
and the hatred of your kin. That shivering fever may stretch you
nine times, and that particularly at the time of Easter ('because,'
it is explained, 'it was at Easter time our Lord was put to death,
and it is the time He can best hear the curses of the poor').

'M